MASTER OF FINE ARTS - CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAMS

Are you in over your head, gone too far to turn back now, and you are thinking of applying to a MFA Writing Program? My friend, NC Poet Laureate Kathryn Stripling Byer recently sent me this information to share with you. Check out CONVERSE COLLEGE Low Residency MFA Writing Program in Spartenburg, SC.

http://www.converse.edu/academics/school-education-and-graduate-studies/graduate-programs/graduate-programs-other-fields/m-6

Two other Low Residency MFA Writing Programs are: Warren Wilson College at Swananona, NC
(Talk with graduate Nancy Simpson)

http://www.warren-wilson.edu/academics/catalog/catalog2.php?name=mfa_program&contents=no&year=08-09

or Low Residency MFA at Spalding College in Kentucky (talk with graduate Rosemary Royston.)

http://spalding.edu/academics/mfa/

What poem most changed you as a human or most influenced you as a poet?

Question?

What poem most changed you as a human or most influenced you as a poet?

Nancy Simpson: "The Teeth Mother Naked at Last" by Robert Bly in 1970 and later incorporated into his book Sleepers Joining Hands both changed me as a human and influenced me as a poet. As I read the poem for the first time (alone, young and unknowing, an unquestioning American Citizen)  I kept asking myself - "What is this? And answering myself: "It's war. It's the Vietnam war, and all war and every other lie about humanity that was ever told."

You can read this poem in it's entirety, if you can read it, if you can stay with it. I hope you will.

http://bibliosity.blogspot.com/2009/09/teeth-mother-naked-at-last.html

A second poem I hope you will read, in the same vein is Robert S. King's poem "After the War, The War," first published  by Foundling Review. Read Now on line at  FutureCycle Press.

http://futurecycle.org/FutureCyclePoetry/AfterTheWar.aspx

Celebrating the birth and life of Doctor Martin Luther King,  poet Kathryn Stripling Byer shares with readers in her post  "Continuing to Excavate Our Southern Past,"  one of her poems that was first published in Crab Orchard Review and forthcoming in her new book titled Descent from LSU Press,  her poem "What I See Now."
http://kathrynstriplingbyer.blogspot.com/2012/01/continuing-to-excavate-our-southern.html

Read the poem. Your comments are welcome.

Rosemary Royston Featured on Red Neck Press - TW0 POEMS

Rosemary Royston is featured on  Red Neck Press With Fried Chicken and Coffee, a blogzine of rural literature, working class literature, Appalachian Literature and off-on commentary, reviews and rants.

http://www.friedchickenandcoffee.com/2012/01/10/poems-by-rosemary-royston-2/

WANT TO HELP JAPAN RECOVER FROM EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI? Proceeds from the sale of this book will go to ongoing relief efforts in Japan

Poems by Nancy Simpson
Janice Townley Moore
Maren O. Mitchell
Karen Paul Holmes
and others


http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/amikayepf

ACROSS THE MILES - A Note From my Editor Andrea L. Watson

Dear Nancy,

Now that the (poetic) dust has cleared from getting our new anthology out and about, I wish to take a moment to say thank you for sending us a copy of your book from Carolina Wren Press, Living Above the Frost Line. 

I have so enjoyed reading your selected poems this week, watching the snow fall in Denver and Taos, enjoying the very wonderful and different scenery of your poetry set in North Carolina. I especially love the poems entitled, "At the End of Always" and "This Night", "Traveling", "Night Student", "Sharing the Bed with Mother" (and I have been there!), "Heritage", and, of course, "The Collection", which we admire in Collecting Life. 

Brava for your use of imagery, lining, and your ability to create and re-create situations with which we all can associate and, too, engage in commiseration.

Also, thank you for your participation and patience with bringing our anthology to birth and for your very kind words about it on your blog.

I truly hope that we will someday have the opportunity to meet.

Best regards across the miles,

Andrea 

--
-Andrea L. Watson

 www.3taospress.com

Collecting Life: Poets on Objects Known and Imagined

may be obtained directly from the press or from Amazon

COLLECTING LIFE: POETS ON OBJECTS KNOWN AND IMAGINED - A NEW POETRY ANTHOLOGY

Poetry Lovers, Here is a new anthology hot off the press with poems by some of your favorite poets: "The Composer, The Bone Yard" by Pattiann Rogers, "Morpho" by Penelope Schambly Schott, "Lauds" by Kathryn Stripling Byer, "On the Beach" by Jane Hirschfield and others, including "The Collection" by Nancy Simpson.







Collecting Life was edited by Madelyn Garner and Andrea Watson with an introduction by Bill Brown Professor of  American Culture, University of Chicago.

Until now, no anthology about collecting existed.

Buy your copy:http://www.amazon.com/Collecting-Life-Poets-Objects-Imagined/dp/0984792503

NOMINATE YOUR FAVORITE BOOK FOR S.I.B.A.

SIBA SOUTHERN INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLERS AWARD Nominations are now open. Nominations will close Feb 14th, 2012. Poetry books can be nominated.  The book must be published in 2011 and must be set in the south or written by a southerner - preferably both. Did you read a new book last year? Want to nominate it for SIBA? Find your member book store on the list and name your favorite 2011 book.


http://www.sibaweb.com/home/siba-book-award


Meanwhile - Want to see this site continue? Sorry to ask, but I am curious about what you practicing poets want. Let me know.

Hello Poets and Writers, From Living Above the Frost Line, in the Blue Ridge Mountains

Friends and Fellow writers,
Happy New Year.
This photo was taken Jan. 2009,
by my hand, through my eyes,
off the deck of my home.






Dear Poet and Writing Friends, You may have been wondering - "Where is she?" or maybe not. You may not give a hoot. I need to know. Here at the end of 2011, I totally lost this blog and the opportunity to communicate with you.  Looks like my site is back this morning. I am shouting with joy, with hope LIVING ABOVE THE FROST LINE will hold and  continue as we move into 2012. It was a crisis for me. I hope to never have to go through that horror again.  I do not have a clue what took my site down. I do not know how it came back this morning.

If you know me, you know I am intelligent. I can do this. I have a storehouse of information to share with poets and writers. I hope to continue but not sure you have interest in poetry at all. I do not know if you are interested in southern and Appalachian poets and writers - their new books and where you can buy them at their press.  I've featured many southern and Appalachian writers throughout the past three years.  I have a line up for 2012. I have suggestions and an updated list of markets calling for poems now. Are you interested?

Or is there some other reason you visit this site? The links to yet other writing sites? The latest news of writing events in the mountains of western NC and North Georgia?

Sorry to put you on the spot. Are you interested? Comments please.  What are your interests?

Two Poems by Nancy Simpson - You can read them on Line- FUTURE CYCLE PRESS

Nancy Simpson ends the year on the up-swing - with ten poems accepted this year. You can read two of the most recent on line - FutureCycle Press. "First Responder" in  AMERICAN SOCIETY - What Poets See 2011. (34) and "Years Later- Still the Old Dream" in Future Cycle Anthology 2011, (27)


http://futurecycle.org/FutureCyclePoetry/SimpsonBio.aspx
click on poems at the bottom of the page

GIVING BOOKS AS CHRISTMAS GIFTS ? GOOD FOR YOU!

If you looking for a gift book for a woman on your Christmas Shopping list, consider buying Living Above the Frost Line,

New and Selected Poems.Especially if the woman lives in or is fond of the Blue Ridge - Southern Appalachian Mountains. LivingAbove the Frost Line is a 2011 finalists for SIBA - Southern Independent Booksellers Award, nominated for The Weatherford Poetry Award and  Oscar Arnold Poetry Award, reviewed in FutureCycle Press, Independent News, Asheville Citizens Times, Prairie Schooner and in the current issue of Asheville Poetry Review.

(from back cover of Living Above the Frost Line - 
New and Selected Poems)

“NANCY SIMPSON’S POEMS SPEAK WITH A VOICE that knows where it comes from, honoring that place and the web of relationships that exist within it. She can make the world shimmer in a single line. She can break your heart. She can sing. She does what a poet has to do, wake the reader into a fresh vision of reality.” —KATHRYN STRIPLING BYER, North Carolina Poet Laureate Emerita

“HARD-WON, SOMETIMES HARD-BITTEN, the poems of Living Above the Frost Line emerge from the page like daffodils from a snow bank: colorful, hardy and defiant. It is a privilege to be admitted into Nancy Simpson’s intense vision of the world, a pleasure to stand for a while in its light.” —FRED CHAPPELL, North Carolina Poet Laureate Emeritus

“LIVING ABOVE THE FROST LINE showcases the arc of a life lived richly and rendered in finely made poems of heartbreak—and beauty. Nancy Simpson possesses a wise world view grounded in and informed by the intricacies of place, offering all of us the great haven poetry can be in hands as capable as hers.” —CLAUDIA EMERSON, winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

“REPLETE WITH A QUIET WISDOM, Nancy Simpson’s poems are powerfully focused on the landscape and the people who inhabit this giving, fragile land she cherishes but cannot always protect. The poet wastes nothing as she trains her vision on both the ordinary and the sublime, ‘having learned the leaves of trees, /the language of ants, not much scares her.’ Nancy Simpson shows us how to learn to love and forgive the world in poems that are always wise and generous of heart.” —JUDITH ORTIZ COFER

“IN LIVING ABOVE THE FROST LINE, Nancy Simpson takes us to the top of a Carolina mountain and gives us a clear lens through which to mark the seasons of a lifetime. These poems reflect the history of a place and the hardy people who know that ‘nothing is certain except death.’ Hardship and grief, yes, but also friendship, humor, compassion, and the electrifying power of imagination. Through image and insight, Simpson’s mountain becomes a sustaining force, and we rejoice in the parallel certainty of rebirth. —JUDITH KITCHEN

Order Nancy Simpson’s  Living Above the Frost Line: New and Selected Poems from 

Carolina Wren Press  120 Morris Street Durham, NC 27701

Bookstores and Schools can order wholesale by phone 
919 560 2738 

or e mail carolinawrenpress@earthlink,net
ISBN 978-0-932112-61-3 Laureate Series (2010) $15.95 Retail – $14.35  at CWP.

Or buy from Independent Book Sellers who nominated the book for a SIBA Award.

City Lights Book Store in Sylva, NC (828) 516-9499

Phillips and Lloyds Book Shop (828) 389- 1492

Also available at amazon.com

or order from the author. one book - $15.95 cover price postage free or order through the month of December 2011, two copies for $20.00 post paid. (828) 389-6497

NANCY SIMPSON’s poems have been published widely in journals such as Prairie Schooner, The Georgia Review, Tar River Poetry, The Southern Poetry Review and Kalliope. Her previous books are Across Water and Night Student. In 1991, she received the North Carolina Arts Council Writing Fellowship for Poetry. A longtime member of the North Carolina Writers Network, she co-founded Netwest to serve writers in the nine westernmost counties and Qualla Boundary. contact Nancy Simpson at (828) 389-6497   nance@dnet.net   www.nancysimpson.blogspot.com

ADD  SIBA FINALISTS TO YOUR GIFT SHOPPING LIST.

http://malaprops.com/holiday/SIBA/hc_2011_ba.html

Hello fellow ECHOES ACROSS THE BLUE RIDGE authors. Our anthology has been widely accepted and reviewed. You may have heard of the newest review by Mary Ickes in Western N.C. Women, but did you know she specifically mentioned your writing. You can read her comments. Click below.  Have you heard any other talk about ECHOES ACROSS THE BLIE RIDGE. Let me know what you think. Leave a comment.  Nancy Simpson, Editor

http://www.wncwoman.com/2011/12/01/book-review-3/


Mary Ickes said in a note to NCWN West that she did not read anything in the anthology that she did not like. Here is a list of the authors she mentioned in her review:


Steven Harvey, Kathryn Stripling Byer, Bettie Sellers, Gary Carden, Glenda Barrett, Glenda Beall, Ellen Andrews, Mary Michelle Bodine Keller, Estelle Darrow Rice, William V. Reynolds, Kitty Inman, Dick Michener, Charlotte Ross, Mary Lou McKillip, Lana Hendershott, Susan Lefler, John T. Campbell, Jayne Joudon Ferrer, Rachel Bronnum, Rosemary Royston, Maren O. Mitchell, Karen Paul Holmes, Brenda Kay Ledford, Marshall McClung, Richard Argo, Wendy Richard Tanner, StarShield Lortie, Ellen Lampe. Ickes also mentioned Byron Herbert Reece, 1917-1958, to whom the anthology was dedicated.

Mary Ickes praises Echoes Across the Blue Ridge, edited by Nancy Simpson, an anthology which features stories, essays and poems by 62 authors who live and write in the Southern Appalachian Mountains. Ickes said, "It would make the perfect holiday gift for anyone who loves great writing or who is interested in North Carolina’s culture and history."

NORTH CAROLINA WRITERS'NETWORK getting out the news reported:

Echoes Across the Blue Ridge Reviewed in WNC Women

We just heard a rumor that the December 2011 issue of WNC Womenwill feature an ebullient review of Echoes Across the Blue Ridge: Stories, Essays, and Poems by Writers Living in and Inspired by the Southern Appalachian Mountains (Winding Path Publishing, 2010). In a sneak peak, reviewer Mary Ickes said, “In all sincerity, I’ve never read a collection in which I liked every piece. Deciding which authors to include proved frustrating, because I wanted to mention everybody! GO NETWEST!”

From the book’s description:

Echoes Across the Blue Ridge consists of the work of 62 authors: members of North Carolina Writers’ Network West. The volume includes stories and poems reflecting the everyday lives of mountain people, their experiences, their outlook on life, and their overall philosophies. The subjects range from the mundane to hilarious comic sketches. The reader will laugh, cry, and feel the heart and soul of these writers.

Contributors include former North Carolina Poet Laureate Kathryn Stripling Byer of Cullowhee; Gary Carden of Sylva; and an introduction by Robert Morgan, among many more.

This collection was edited by Nancy Simpson and received blurbs from acclaimed NC authors Ron Rash and Lee Smith. It would make the perfect holiday gift for anyone who loves great writing or who is interested in North Carolina’s culture and history.

Echoes Across the Blue Ridge is available anywhere books are sold, through the NetWest website, and throughwww.ncwriters.org.

Congratulations to NetWest and all who contributed to this important piece of North Carolina heritage.

A GIFT BOOK FOR THE CHILD ON YOUR CHRISTMAS LIST

Are you shopping for the child on your Christmas List? A child that perhaps lives in Georgia?
Here is the book to consider: THE 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS IN GEORGIA written by Susan R. Spain Illustrated by Elizabeth O. Dulemba.  










THE 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS IN GEORGIA - Book Signings!
     It's time, once again, to celebrate THE 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS IN GEORGIA! I hope you'll consider purchasing my latest picture book as a gift for your loved ones this year. And if not mine, Sterling Children's Books is working on one for each state. (Click Here to see if the one for your state is available yet.) CLICK HERE to learn more about my Georgia book and download free activities.
     And if you can stop by, I'll be signing copies at several Georgia independent booksellers over the next few weeks:

Scott's Bookstore
Newnan, Georgia
Wednesday, December 7 from 3:00 - 5:00 pm
Hall's Book Exchange
Gainseville, Georgia
Thursday, December 8 from 4:00 - 6:00 pm
Little Shop of Stories
Decatur, Georgia
Thursday, December 15 from 7:00 - 8:00 pm
Atlanta Symphony Store
Atlanta, Georgia
Friday, December 16 from 1:00 - 3:00 pm.

BEST GIFT FOR HIM ON YOUR CHRISTMAS SHOPPING LIST - THE HUNTED RIVER BY ROBERT S. KING

Give him, on your Christmas shopping list,  a book. Yes. Giving a man a book means caring enough to give something of worth. It's certainly not the same as is giving him a tie, or a coffee mug. Giving a book implies you chose something unique for him. Giving a book says, He's smart, a man who reads. Think of the added opportunity to write inside the cover some words of gratitude, something like "Thank you for being you" or "With appreciation." If he cocks his head and lifts his eyes, he probably is thinking:  She knows I'm intelligent. 

BIO

Robert S. King is the Director of FutureCycle Press  and Coeditor of FutureCycle Poetry, an on line and print poetry magazine. He is the author of five poetry collections including: When Stars Fall Down as Snow, Garland Press, 1976, Dream of the Electric Eel, Wolfsong Publications, 1982, Traveler's Tale, Whistle Press, Inc, 1998, The Hunted River, Shared Roads Press, 2009 and The Grvedigger's Roots, Shared Roads Press, 2009.

His individual poems have been published far and wide across America in The Kenyon Review, Southern Poetry Review, Main Street Rag, Midwest Quarterly, California Quarterly, Hollins Critic, En Passant, Louisville Review, and other literary magazines.

Contact to order the book.

rsking@futurecycle.org

or visit his website: http://www.robertsking.com

Hear Robert S. King read his poems Friday, December 9, 2011 at 6:30, MOUNTAIN PERK CAFE in Hiawasse, Georgia (across from the Towns County High School.

BEST POETRY BOOK GIFT FOR THE WOMEN ON YOUR CHRISTMAS LIST

PUT THIS BOOK ON YOUR CHRISTMAS 
SHOPPING LIST if you are looking for a gift for a woman aged 21-50, a woman who can read and loves to read books, a woman who especially loves to read literary poetry of our time, perhaps she writes poems herself. She is a woman who is not narrow minded but rather is one who is curious about humans and their relationships, one seeking a world view, whose concerns are matters of the heart, matters of the spirit.




I highly recommend this book:  Poet Nancy Simpson




Debra Kaufman's literary reputation is well known to readers of poetry. She is also the author of Family of Strangers, Still Life Burning, Moon Mirror Whisky Wind and A Certain Light. Individual poems have been published in Southern Poetry Review, Greensboro Poetry Review, Pembrok, Carolina Quarterly and in anthologies such as 100 YEARS OF NC POETRY and Literary Trails of NC. Her short and full-length plays have been performed throughout North Carolina, her adopted home.


To buy THE NEXT MOMENT, $13.95 add $2.00 postage




CONTACT Publisher:
http://www.jacarpress.com/contact.html



Want to read poems from this collection by the author 
Debra Kaufman? 


THREE POEMS BY DEBRA KAUFMAN all from 
her book THE NEXT MOMENT

Good Girls

Good girls always fall for bad boys.

We’re trained in the fine arts

of downcast eyes and demure smiles,

to caress the crisp pages of the Bible.

Trained in the fine arts

of be ye kind and don’t make waves,

I caress the crisp pages of the Bible,

Daddy’s rabbit pelts and pheasant breasts

(be ye kind and don’t make waves?).

I earn gold stars and pinch my sister.

Daddy’s rabbit pelts and pheasant breasts

teach me the secret glee of bad.

I earn gold stars and pinch my sister,

desire the scent of Brut and smoke, want

to be taught the secret glee of bad

by a boy whose eyes could size me up.

Desiring the scent of Brut and smoke,

the swagger, oh, of his lean body, I want

the boy whose eyes size me up,

his rough hands, wild hair, tight jeans.

Oh, the swagger of his lean body!

Engine thrumming, music blaring,

rough hands, wild hair, tight jeans.

I’ll take you to see Orion straddle the sky.

Engine thrumming, music blaring,

he takes me where Orion straddles the sky.

I say, I see the good in you. He laughs:

Good girls always fall for bad boys.

The Rushing Way I Went

As if each day were the same river

with variations—

one day tires, shingles,

a doll bobbing past,

the next, a heron, hunched

and studious on the bank.

I’d wake up, put in (yes,

I had then delusions of steering),

and set in motion this sequence:

make coffee, feed the kids,

get them to school on time,

on to my job, the turnpike commute,

yada yada yada.

Evenings, upwind, rewind.

Where were you?

In those short remaining hours,

your inevitable flights

took away the best parts of us.

All so long ago.

Now I wash dishes

to the tunes of smoky angels

and doves calling from the deep

down of their soft, gray breasts.

On Learning His Diagnosis 2

After September rains flies

cluster on the porch

like one still breath.

Tiny opportunists,

they zoom inside

in crushable husks,

settle on fresh-picked blackberries,

buzz lamps and windows.

Pitiless,

I vacuum up their no-account lives

as they cling to screens

in the last light they’ll ever know.

 www.debrakaufman.info

NCWRITERS NETWORK MEMBER BOB GROVE WILL DO DRAMATIC READING OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL

Bob Grove will have a dramatic reading of Dickens' Christmas Carol at 7 p.m. Wednesday, December 7, 2011, at the Folk School in Brasstown, NC. It will be followed by an 8:00 performance of the Folk School Morris, garland, and rapper sword dance teams. Free and open to the public.

POET OF THE MONTH OF NOVEMBER, 2011 MALAIKA KING ALBRECHT WITH THREE NEW POEMS

Malaika King Albrecht is the Featured Poet of the month of Novemer, 2011. I first met Malaika in a NCWN Conferene  Master Class, "Line Dancing" taught by Kathryn Stripling Byer. Malaika is a serious young poet with publications in magazines and anthologies to her credit. She is the author of a chapbook poetry collecitons and two recent full length collections. Congratulations to Maliaka King Alrecht in this her birth month. She one of our most  shining stars out of North Carolina at this time.

If you like these poems, let me know and I will pass the word on to our poet of the month, or you can leave a comment for her yourself.
Thank you for reading. --Nancy Simpson

 3 poems by Malaika King Albrecht  upcoming from Press 53 book

How to Walk Right Through a Woman

I can’t remember the curse that made me

invisible. I only know that one day

he held my hand and then another,

my hand slipped through his like sand.

I stayed in the room, an empty vase

in the dark and not even moonlight could find me.

He may have sensed my presence

as he stepped around me and around me

packing his books, clothes, toothbrush.

By morning he could walk right through

as if I were an open window,

a door, the immaterial air.

 Previously Published in Bay Leaves

 On the Shore at Holden Beach 

 I.

High tide reveals

in every beginning,

an end.

The sea asks, How strong

will you stand? Rises and falls

all around you.

No matter where

we die, we’re buried

at sea.

Once my daughter nearly drowned

blue lips and

the sound of waves

inside her chest.

Cut adrift,

we clung to a hospital bed

for three days until she

thrashed ashore-

said I want to go home.

II.

She finds a whole

sand dollar in the surf,

places it in my palm. Don’t

lose it, mommy. Squeeze tight.

I say No, it will break.

How to teach her

that a fist

is how life catches us

in the jar of our own desire

to hold, to count

what we think is ours.

I show her, Hold your hands

with the sand dollar

between your palms.

Like we’re praying, she says

walking gently back to shore.

published in Asheville Poetry Review

The Dusting


Every body wants. The tongue licks
that last hint of sugar from lips.

Fingers rub satin clean from the blanket’s edge.
The soles of our feet sink into earth until the air

carries the odor of crushed grass.
Everyone wants more. The eyes

of the dying are wide open. The mouths
of the dying are wide open. The nostrils. The ears.

The hearts incessant: More. More.
Listen. A dark song folds the night clouds

into a clap of thunder. I will die.
There will be nothing

left but a wisp of smoke rising
from my open mouth like a Satin moth

wheeling towards the slow turning-
a kiss of white wing dust on my lips.

 Previously published in The Pedestal


Malaika King Ablrecht's newest book Spill was also published by Main Street Rag. Her poems have been published in many literary magazines and anthologies and have recently won awards at the North Carolina Poetry Council, Salem College and Press 53. She’s the founding editor of Redheaded Stepchild, an online magazine that only accepts poems that have been rejected elsewhere. She lives in Pinehurst, N.C. with her family and is a therapeutic riding instructor.

Book can be ordered here http://www.mainstreetrag.com/MKAlbrecht_2.html

COMING SOON - SUNRISE FROM BLUE THUNDER - Pirene’s Fountain Japan Anthology

Poems forthcoming from Nancy Simpson, Maren O. Mitchell, Karen Paul Holmes, 

and Janice Townley Moore. Information will be made available as soon as the book is in print.

Edior: Ami Kaye

Katherine Herchler

Book Cover by Tracy McQueen

How to buy a copy: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/sunrise-from-blue-thunder/18777045